C programs slow startup

Question

Even a simple HelloWorld program is taking about 30 seconds to run. Is there a way to speed up the execution? I tried it in codeblocks using MinGW. I have also tried it with Borland c++ 5.5 command line tools. In both the cases it took about 20 to 30 seconds to run, however compilation was quick.

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
    printf("HELLO");
    return 0;
}

It is not an issue with how fast the program RUNS but how fast it STARTS. — dtech, Sep 20 '14 at 20:20
I guess you are right ddriver; the terminal window opens and then after 20 seconds or so HELLO is printed. — Shubham Agarwal, Sep 20 '14 at 20:25
I remember having a similar issue many years ago, well it wasn't 30 seconds, but still 4-5 sec pause. I don't remember how I fixed it, but probably with updating the compiler. It is most likely an issue with the platform runtime libraries. — dtech, Sep 20 '14 at 21:53
It's 'Hello world'. My apps, with GUI, DB, peripheral server and whatever run up in <1 sec. — Martin James, Sep 20 '14 at 23:26

R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-20T23:44:24.160

2

Are you running antivirus software? My guess is that yours insists on heavy scanning of newly created executables before allowing them to run.

Another possibility is that (at least) one directory in the pathname for the executable file (or for some DLL it depends upon) has a very large number of files in it. On some versions of windows, by making directories containing roughly 64k file entries in them, you can make opening files in their subdirectories arbitrarily slow.

edited Sep 20 '14 at 23:44

answered Sep 20 '14 at 22:36

R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE

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+1 gotta be something like that, something moronic. Still, how long would it take to scan 'Hello world'? – Martin James Sep 20 '14 at 23:25
@MartinJames: My standard go-to answer whenever someone is experiencing pathological slowness on Windows is always "probably a virus scanner". See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5924707/fwrite-chokes-on-xml-version/5924782#5924782 – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE Sep 20 '14 at 23:42
Just disabled the antivirus. It worked !! The code took only 0.019 seconds. :) – Shubham Agarwal Sep 21 '14 at 05:11
1

WHat AV is that? I must be sure to never use it:( – Martin James Sep 21 '14 at 08:19
AVAST Free antivirus :( – Shubham Agarwal Sep 25 '14 at 13:42
Same problem here also! https://superuser.com/q/1662449/1430641 – Sam Joshua Jul 14 '21 at 09:35

C programs slow startup

1 Answers1

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